US jobless claims still showing healthier levels

Published date: 22/08/2019

17 views

It has been said by a number of fund managers, that unless the series of jobless claims data starts to deteriorate, the health of the US economy will continue to show strength - in relative terms at the very least. While these weekly numbers are still lower down the priority list, they continue to help underpin the USD, which as yet, is reluctant to give up any ground despite the prospects of Fed rate cuts later this year. At 209k, the claims data is again better than expected.

Attention for the market remains on tomorrow's main event, which sees Fed chair Powell speaking a the Jackson Hole Symposium, and this will be keenly scrutinised for any fresh sentiment from within the Federal Reserve. More recently, as we have already noted, policymaker Esther George is still comfortable with the state of the economy and continues to argue for rates to remain on hold - as she did at the last FOMC meeting. This gave the USD some back up earlier in the session, but range limits seem to have been stretched far enough.

EUR/USD has clearly bottomed out ahead of the mid 1.1000's unless North American traders made a renewed push for the downside later and in conjunction with this, USD/JPY is again struggling at 106.60-65, but not for the want of persistent trying. All in all, it looks as though the market is attempting breakouts on both sides of the market, but tight ranges are being maintained and this looks likely to continue of the next 24 hours.

Canadian wholesale sales rose 0.6% in June to give USD/CAD a modest push to the downside, but there seems to be a lack of conviction in pressing further in order to test the lows see in the aftermath of the post CPI sell-off seen Wednesday - when we hit a low of 1.3255 or so.